Beauty makes me hopeless. I don’t care why anymore I just want to get away. When I look at the city of Paris I long to wrap my legs around it. When I watch you dancing there is a heartless immensity like a sailor in a dead calm sea. Desires as round as peaches bloom in me all night, I no longer gather what falls.
“
We all have one foot in the grave, the poet insisted.
Well, if that’s the case, the pretty girl drawled, I should get a pedicure every week instead of just a coupla weeks.
They looked at her slim, tanned feet in their strappy sandals. It was summer. The grass was green as jade and freshly cut.
Who had been the first to notice, they wondered later, that swelling on her instep? The swelling, tender to the touch, that, even she would later say, hadn’t been there yesterday.
“
Joy Williams | “Winter”